California Proposes Rules to Spur Clean Car Growth

Jan 02, 2012

California's Air Resources Board (ARB) is proposing new rules to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles.

The new rules aim to put 1.4 million electric, plug-in and hydrogen cars on California roads by 2025. In terms of GHG emissions, the ARB expects the regulation to result in a 75 percent reduction by 2025, which would be an absolute reduction of 52 million tons of GHGs - the equivalent of taking ten million cars off the road.

When the program is fully implemented, the annual fuel costs to operate a car will be reduced by an average of 25 percent, with an overall cumulative savings of $22 billion by 2025. Economic analysis by the ARB indicates that the overall savings generated by the proposed rules will result in an additional 21,000 jobs in California in 2025, rising to 37,000 in 2030.

California is acting independently of U.S. federal legislation. BC faces a similar situation, as it does not look likely that Ottawa will take any substantive action to address climate change.

Due to BC's abundance of available clean energy, plug-in electric vehicles have the potential to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector.

The Plug-in BC Working Group recently announced a host of provincial programs to support increased use of clean energy vehicles (CEV) in BC. The CEV for BC program includes point of sale incentives (ranging from $2,500-$5,000 depending on vehicle type), and a residential rebate ($500 per station) for purchases of qualifying EV charging equipment.

The provincial CEV strategy also includes an Infrastructure Deployment Demonstration Project, which involves funding for 400-1000 EV charging stations across the province.